E-War 2016 is Already Here

The largest online retailers of India are all ready to take on the festive season. Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon India are all primed for a mega clash as they prepare to bid for larger shares of consumer spend in the first week of October. The annual e-war between the rival companies with Diwali offers have already commenced and will continue throughout the week where the consumers rush off to their beloved online stores before they even finish reading the simple yet super powerful four-letter word ‘SALE’.

The nation’s most significant e-commerce players are trying to overpower one another with new stats on product sale, assortment, and discount, in the process telling investors who’s the biggest. Analysts have estimated the top three online firms, Flipkart, Amazon India and Snapdeal, to end up with combined sales of $1.5 billion, or Rs 10,000 crore, in the festive sale week that began over the weekend. Amazon India announced that sales will commence on 1st October giving itself a headstart whereas Snapdeal is playing the ‘time’ card more than anything else. Amazon India has claimed to have sold 1 lakh product units in first 30 minutes, 15 lakh units in first 12 hours on first day of the ‘Great Festival Day’ sale.

Snapdeal, running the sale as ‘Unbox Diwali’, stated that “Nearly 11 Lakh buyers from over 2,800 cities and towns across India bought at Snapdeal in the first 16 hours of the sale. The sale which started at midnight with 180 orders being booked per second got bigger during the day as buyers used the national holiday to explore a plethora of attractive deals.”

Flipkart claimed that they sold over half a million products within one hour on Day 1 of the sale; “Within the electronics and gadget category, we sold more Apple watches in 10 minutes than the total sale of Apple watches online and offline in a month”. They also added that Flipkart’s subsidiary Myntra also clocked three times more revenue in the first hour compared to 2015 edition.

Both the companies claimed that they were providing products at large discounts. Amazon India is betting on the largest selection of 80 million products. “These marathon 120 hours of the event mark our continuing commitment to bring the biggest sale yet for our customers,” said Amit Agarwal, Vice-President and Country Head, Amazon India.